Can Gamma Rays Reveal Their Source?

[wolram]

Does a gamma ray ray carry enough information to prove its source?

 

[malawi_glenn]

depends, it can't bend in magnetic nor electric fields, so the you can extrapolate its direction. i.e you can know from what postition in space it come from.

 

[mgb_phys]

Before Chandra most X ray telescopes had pretty poor angular resolution so you had to do something like "there's an X ray source in the same bit of the sky as the Crab Nebula, X ray sources have to be pretty energetic so therefore the Crab must be the source of the X rays"
chandra has about the same resolution as the best optical ground based telescopes.

 

[Astronuc]

Does a gamma ray ray carry enough information to prove its source?

If one is referring to cosmological origins, for a single gamma photon, not necessarily. One usually relies upon the direction from which the gamma ray is received in order to determine is source, as indicated by mgb_phys.

 

[wolram]

Apart from the direction i guess its energy is clue as to its origins, if so do we have an idea of what phenomenon produces an gamma ray of X energy?

 

[malawi_glenn]

you mean X-rays ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_burster

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